Skipping Town

Oh, bliss. All our mail has been forwarded for the past two months to Connellsville, but finally, finally I’ve perused the new Parenting and am ready for this month’s commentary. Maybe it’s because I’m still just so very tired, but the abundance of you-go-girl-with-your-fab-mama-self tone and the excessive exclamation points annoyed me more than usual this time. Let’s get right down to it. In “Picky-eater Pleasers,” we’re advised on how to handle taking a picky kid out to a holiday party. One piece of advice was to feed the kid before leaving the house and then not freak out if the kid eats only carbs or cookies at the party. But what would she eat, if she’s already eaten a meal? Another meal? Nonsense. But I’ll reserve my commentary for the final tip: “Bring a food ‘present’ to the shindig to share. If your kid is super picky or if he has food allergies, bring a gift of his favorite dish. (Be sure to get him to wrap it up with a bow.) Give it to your host, then mention that your chil...

Since Lucia seems, today, to be much like her usual self, with the exception of some screaming when dressed in her winter coat and some nap-refusing, and, of course, some morning crankiness and spitting out of nicely offered food at a play date—oh. Scratch that. Since we’re heading to Connellsville tonight and my exhausted, weary body and soul sees a glimmer of sleeping-in, baby-free-outings, grandparent-backup days in the very near future, I will interrupt the regularly scheduled programming of fatigued posts to provide a brief cuteness report. A new favorite book is Duck & Goose: A Book of Opposites . One spread shows Duck being happy, while Goose is sad, with a tear on his cheek. Whenever we get to this page and I say in a mournful voice that Goose is sad, Lucia does her cuddle-cuddle-cuddle motion. I am very taken with this: not only does she understand what sad means, she also understands that cuddling Goose is what will make him feel better. I did not prompt her to do this. G...

Little One, As you can see, I am several days late with this month’s letter. This is your fault, though not in an intentional spirit. You’ve followed old habits and acquired a cold after our long flight, and you also seem to be teething—you’ve been gnawing and drooling and screaming and crying and not napping well and not falling asleep well and basically not given me even one millisecond’s rest for one entire week. I am falling over with exhaustion and frustration. Only late this afternoon did the regular Lucia seem to reappear, with dancing and snapping and giggling. Perhaps the worst is over. (And surely it is, since I have to get through just Monday now and then we’re on our way to two weeks of grandparent backup. I am literally counting the minutes.) But, a quick recap of the month nonetheless. Walking, of course—more consistently now, especially yesterday and today, when you’ve often opted to walk instead of crawl to your objective. And more words—besides “bump,” you’re saying “b...

Rolling around on the floor giggling! Feeding her stuffed animals! Dancing to the music of her push toy! Lucia was very calculating in her explosion of cuteness over the past few weeks. Let me ingratiate myself , she thought, before turning into an absolute monster. Upon our arrival in New York, which followed the Worst Flight Ever—well, let me spend a moment on the flight. Five hours of screaming, crying, and writhing, with intermittent bouts of more screaming, crying, and writhing. No nap, though it was naptime. We were the parents about whom people whisper disgustedly, Can’t they control their child? We were trying, believe me. But even with her very own seat, even with an entire grocery store’s worth of snacks, even with an arsenal of toys, Lucia would neither nap, nor snack, nor play. She just wanted to scream. Now, back home, she has turned into a baby Godzilla, descending on the city with roars and stomps, gobbling skyscrapers and sending terrified pedestrians fleeing as she wre...

We’re going home! We actually have return tickets, for Saturday. It has been a truly lovely, fun seven weeks, but we are ready to go, even if it means returning to frigid temperatures. I’m not quite sure how we’re going to survive this, our first real winter in five years. But I have a new winter coat, hat, mittens, and Nanouk of the North fur booties for Lucia, so we’re going in prepared. Things we’ve loved about Mountain View: the Eagle Park playground, the public library, the Mother Goose & More program at the library, walking down Castro Street, the smore’s bars at Le Boulanger, shopping at Trader Joe’s, driving to Target, going to Paper Source, watching Lucia stand at the window to wave goodbye to Andrew’s colleagues catching the shuttle to work (even on days when Andrew’s not among them), playing outside pretty much every day for a little while, exploring all the beautiful fallen fall leaves, buying far too many books at the library book sale, seeing the Clarks, seeing Julie ...

Lucia is walking. Never more than eight or ten steps at a time—and usually fewer—but when she gets it in her head that she wants to practice, she goes for it. She stands up—rising slowly from Downward Dog into a balanced stand—and then toddles forward in a Frankenstein walk, grinning all the while. She’ll walk to me now if I sit on the floor with my arms held out, and she’ll walk with her own arms held out, walking faster when she reaches me and then nearly jumping into a hug. It is too, too cute. But not as cute as her dancing. When the nose of her lion push-toy is pushed, tinny electronic songs play—which, being a baby, Lucia loves. She will push her lion, but when the music stops, she stops too, eases slowly to the front of the lion, pushes the nose, and then walks back to the handle. Instead of pushing it again, though, for several moments she’ll dance to the music—bending her little knees in an attempt at rhythm and snapping the fingers of one hand. Well, she can’t actually snap. ...

Anyone who knows Lucia knows she loves books. Reading books is her number-one favorite activity. Indulge me for a moment as I brag about her amazingly long attention span, her rapt fascination with words and pictures, her absolute absorption in turning pages. This week I watched from the kitchen while she played by herself for twenty minutes—a good portion of which she spent standing at the couch with a pile of books in front of her, selecting one after the other and paging through them. We’ve become regulars at the library across the street, and Lucia charmed a librarian yesterday, who walked past as Lucia was turning pages of a book while sitting by my feet. When we went to the library this morning for the Mother Goose and More song and story time, that same librarian greeted Lucia by saying, “And here’s our little reader!” This mama’s heart swelled with pride. Yes, she is a little reader. She is indeed. Lucia sat or stood with her eyes trained on the librarian throughout the program...

We’ve made our mark on this corporate apartment. Marks on windows, marks on walls, marks on carpet, marks on tables, marks on pretty much every surface that has the potential of coming into contact with babyhands. Though they provided us with a two-bedroom apartment for our unexpectedly lengthy stay here, this apartment is normally set up for a roommate situation. Each bedroom is marked as the “red” room or the “blue” room, and Andrew and I have keys on lanyards corresponding to each color. This is not an apartment where a lot of real-life living goes on. It’s a place where engineers from around the world crash for a month or two while they work on projects here in Mountain View, with roommates cycling in and out. We, however, have lived here. And any living done with a baby around is hard living. The furnishings here are not what you’d call built for the ages, and the kitchen provisions are far from our top-quality things back home. They are, in fact, quite cheap, and when you have a ...

Lucia’s been saying “mama” and “dada” consistently now, with “duck” and “ball” as occasional semi-words. But yesterday she said her official first non-parental word. That word is “bump.” Lucia’s favorite book these days is Fall Colors by Rita Walsh. It is an adorable book about fall leaves and the fun that can be had with them. One page shows children raking leaves and says, “Rake the leaves into a pile, / You’re sure to see lots of smiles. / Spin and tumble, dive and jump, / Then leap off an oak tree stump. / Land in the leaves with a BUMP!” Every time I read this to her, which is going on, oh, five hundred times now, I say “bump” with an excited expression. Yesterday, when I turned to that page and got to “bump,” she turned her little face up to me and said very clearly, “Bump!” Then she kept saying it: “Bump! Bump! Bump!” She said it with a good amount of gusto, putting extra emphasis on the “p.” It is definitely “bump.” She likes saying it so much that when we turned to that page t...

Despite the fact that her nap schedule has gotten completely erratic and out of control, and despite the fact that I still spend much of my day chasing her around the house with forkfuls of food, Lucia has been doing some extremely cute things lately. I thought I’d share some of them here. This is a post that's probably interesting only to grandparents and aunts, but let's indulge them, shall we? She’s gotten incredibly attached to her blankie. Sometimes she puts it over her shoulders like a cape, or around her neck like a stole. Sometimes, when she crawls, she carries it in her mouth. She’s also very attached to her duck and cat stuffed animals. They sleep with her in her crib, and in the morning or after nap, when I lift her and blankie out of the crib, she points insistently at each one until I pick it up and put it into her waiting arms. When we leave her bedroom now I’m always carrying a Lucia who’s hugging her blankie, duck, and cat. We can’t leave the room without all th...

Drum-roll, please: Lucia took her first steps tonight! She was standing at the coffee table, eating sliced grapes while I read her Bunny’s Noisy Book by Margaret Wise Brown, one of her favorites. She was being very cute, doing many of the bunny’s noises and movements—stretching, scratching, munching, thumping. When we finished the book, she pushed it toward me; I was to read it again. This time, when I got to one of her favorite pages, I held the book at a bit of a distance and also held out a slice of grape. She turned from the coffee table and took a step over to grab the grape. She did this several more times, walking toward both me and Andrew to get a slice of grape, taking up to three steps each time. We are on our way! She’s been loving the Stride-and-Ride lion I got her last week, walking back and forth with it in the living room; yesterday I took the lion with us to the playground, and she walked all around the swings and down the sidewalk, stopping only to pick up enticing le...

Thankful for blankie, wrapped around the shoulders, and grapes, and a cold afternoon at the playground, and a fun new push-toy. Happy Thanksgiving!

Lucia is weaned. Our last nursing was Friday, November 19. I breastfed her for exactly one year, one month, and four days. Yay for us. It happened quite easily—we had been down to one feeding for a couple of weeks, before her morning nap, and then one day we just didn’t nurse; we just rocked and sang songs while she nuzzled her blankie. I didn’t consciously nurse her for a “last time,” which I think has helped me not be too sad. Weaning happened naturally and painlessly for both of us. Sleeping straight through from 7:30 to 7—no more nursing—our baby is growing up! And now I get to splurge on some fabulous non-nursing bras. It is high time.

So, we’re still in California. Our best-laid plans were derailed on Friday, when our certainty that returning East was the right thing to do soon gave way to an equally firm decision that staying in California for a few more weeks was best. It came down to the idea of the simple solution being the best. Leaving today meant several flights (CA—FL—NYC), a flight back to CA for Andrew, several days of me and Lucia alone, my parents coming up for a weekend, an entire week alone, another cross-country flight for Andrew for the weekend, and possibly yet one more week alone. It just seemed…complex. Staying here involves just doing what we’ve been doing, with a flight back to NYC in mid-December. We can all stay together. Andrew has to be here for now, and so Lucia and I will be here too. Though we’re very sad to be missing Thanksgiving in Jacksonville, truth be told, it feels fine to be staying on. We’re going to buy some more clothes and toys. We’ll join Beth and Nate in Napa for Thanksgivin...

We’ve had a lovely week in Mountain View. Temperatures in the seventies, cloudless blue skies, leaves crunching underfoot—a perfect California fall. Lucia and I have explored a bit further afield in the past couple of days. Yesterday we drove to Los Altos and walked around the cute downtown, full of nice shops and at least three fabulous toy stores. Today we went to the Stanford Shopping Center, an outdoor mall in Palo Alto, and browsed around for a bit. And Andrew and I have been sampling some of Castro Street’s restaurant offerings this week: ramen at a Japanese noodle house on Tuesday; burritos on Wednesday; and sushi tonight. All delicious. I took Lucia to another free-trial gym class on Tuesday, at The Little Gym. Like the Gymboree class, Lucia was not amused. She did not want to crawl from the center of a circle to me, on the outside. She did not want to sit either on or underneath the gigantic parachute. She did not want to “walk” on a balance beam. She did not want to sit on a ...

Dear Little One, You’re over a year old now, considered, I believe, a toddler and not a baby. Phooey. You are still a baby, a dear one, a trying one, an adorable one, getting cuter and funnier every day. But as you are not actually yet “toddling,” and since you seem to be demonstrating absolutely no interest in it whatsoever, I will continue to see you as a baby. You are very nearly weaned. We are down to about once a day—sometimes twice, but usually once. You are sleeping consistently through the night, from 7:30 to 7 or 7:30. This is blissful. I credit California; being here in unfamiliar surroundings helped break some of the breastfeeding associations, making weaning easier, and it was surprisingly painless to cut out the middle-of-the-night feeding. A week or so of Daddy coming to you when you cried, giving you your pacifier, and singing to you for a little while, and soon you weren’t bothering to wake up at all. Your cutest new trick is “cuddle cuddle cuddle.” You have several bel...

It’s been an idyllic California weekend, though Lucia has the lovely souvenir of a black eye. There is nothing more awful-looking than a baby with a black eye, and she looks distinctly like she’s been in a bar fight. Other parents of toddlers, however, will surely understand that her bar-fight foe was actually a sudden loss of balance while cruising and an unfortunately placed coffee table. Friday night we drove to Redwood City for dinner at the home of one of Andrew’s co-workers and his wife. Their house was just beautiful, with an amazing backyard that featured a Balinese daybed. Their house was stunningly decorated, full of statuary, textiles, masks, and other paraphernalia from the co-worker’s extensive work-related travels through South America. Needless to say, this couple does not yet have children. Everything was breakable, and stone, and heavy. Nothing was covered in yogurt-fingerprints. Toys were not underfoot. I had to watch Lucia with a hawk’s-eye…and yet I still could not ...

At the playground this week, two little girls—sisters—were waving at Lucia from across the playground, and echoing her little squeals back at her. Then they came over, holding hands, because they wanted to say hi. After some smiling and waving back and forth, the older sister said firmly, “We have to go now. We need to get things for my project. I’m doing a project on rose hip tea.” “Are you making rose hip tea?” I asked. “Yes,” she said matter-of-factly. “And I need to go buy rose hips.” This seemed like a very California-y project. But I hope we’re able to send Lucia to a school where she can make rose hip tea, too.

Poor sick baby. For the past couple of weeks, Lucia’s had a cold and cough, and yesterday it took a turn for the worse. So this morning found us at an urgent care center, where we saw a pediatrician and got some antibiotics. I hope this will help. There’s nothing sadder than a runny-nosed, coughing baby who’s also teething. Perhaps because she’s not been feeling well, Lucia has decided that eating is just not for her these days. Three times a day, I embark on an Iron Chef-style contest to use whatever’s in the fridge and freezer (not much, in these temporary quarters) to make something she’ll actually a) put in her mouth, b) chew, and c) swallow. (Sometimes we get through one or two of the steps, only to then have her give the Mango Face and spit everything out.) There have been meals where I’ve prepared three or four things—an egg, toast with cheese, various cut-up fruits, pasta—only to have her deign each item unacceptable and toss it to the floor. And I can't just say too bad yo...

Lucia was a little social butterfly last week. Thursday, our friends Julie and baby Allison drove down from Auburn (near Roseville) to spend the afternoon with us. Allison is just five weeks older than Lucia, and Lucia had such a good time playing with her—they actually seemed to play together, rather than just side by side. We spent time at the playground and here at the apartment, and there was lots of giggling and passing toys back and forth and standing at the window, playing with toys on the windowsill. I met Julie in prenatal yoga—and it’s always been fun to see how the girls have grown over this past year-plus. Maybe someday they’ll be transcontinental pen pals. Saturday we spent the day with the Clarks in Napa, happily revisiting wine-country territory we thought we’d left behind. The grapevines are all gold and red right now, and the scenery in wine country is gorgeous—since we missed the inferno of the summer, we can look at the landscape, including the fully brown hills and ...

Three years ago, Andrew and I got married at The Summit; now, three years later, we’re across the country (still), but on the plane from JFK to SFO we fell into conversation with the Aussie couple sitting in front of us who’d spent three weeks in the United States, including a stop in Farmington to see Fallingwater. We told them we’d gotten married at a place called The Summit—and they said that’s where they’d stayed. Small world. And three fast years! It hardly feels like November here, with temperatures in the mid-seventies, sunny blue skies, lush greenery everywhere. Some leaves are changing, though—at the playground, Lucia’s favorite activity is crawling around and picking up all the fallen leaves, examining each one carefully before handing it to me and seeking the next one. Our lovely playground, however, sometimes seems to me to be the site for some psychoanalytical issues I’ve never addressed. I’ve mentioned before the abject fear and loathing I had as a child for other, brashe...

Happy birthday, happy Halloween. For my birthday Friday we went out to a great Indian restaurant; for Halloween tonight we went to a party at Andrew’s boss’s house. The rest of the weekend has been strangely relaxing—gloriously so—with a nice lunch of pho on Saturday afternoon (Lucia had her first taste of Vietnamese food) and the farmer’s market today. We got groceries, ordered pizza, took walks, played, read. It seemed so quiet, so civilized, so normal, so…nice. One week of Mountain View down. And, I hope, infinite more to go! Ha! Things have taken an interesting turn! Instead of feeling like our return to California is a burden and a horror, we are slightly horrified to realize that this time around we…like it. It feels treacherous even to write this, seeing as how the past three years have been more or less a long rant against the Golden State. But the thing is—and I think I made this clear in my summing-up-our-CA-years posts—we did grow to have a certain fondness for certain Calif...

We’re in California. Again. Craziness! Insanity! It feels so surreal. All the time we were in California we yearned to be back in New York, and now we have a lovely New York apartment and are STILL living in California. We can’t get out. Or do we simply not want to be out? More on my suspicions about this another time. Our trip here went well. Lucia is a good traveler, but a six-hour flight plus an hour delay on the runway at JFK will tax anyone, and by the end she was quite fidgety. She had her own seat on the plane but still slept for only forty minutes. When we arrived, she fell asleep the instant we started up our rental car and woke only briefly at home when we zipped her into her sleep sack. She was up, confused, for the day, at 5:30am PST. We have slowly been working our way out of zombie land, but we’re not out completely. Our apartment here is nice—right off of Castro Street, the main restaurant artery, and directly across the street from a playground and a nice library. Over...

Another month, another issue of Parenting to dissect. This month, I’m annoyed anew by the section headings and tips, which include things like “mom {lovelife},” which instructs me to ask my spouse some “fun queries” to get to know him again; “mom {snacks},” which suggests I “Make schroom!” for frozen deep-fried mushrooms as an alternative to a chocolate bar for my “3 o’clock sweets craving”; and “mom {beauty},” which suggests I use a product called Shimmerskin to give my décolletage a shimmery sheen for holiday open houses. I’m sure Shimmerskin will look wonderful next to the smeared avocado and babyspit my chest usually sports. On to more pressing matters: family {play}. This month, the playtime game suggestions have a Thanksgiving theme. To be honest, they’re not as awful as usual. Collecting pinecones and leaves for a centerpiece: fun. Making placemats with pictures of things you’re thankful for and laminating them: fun. Drawing and coloring hand turkeys: classic fun. But rest assu...

We had Lucia’s one-year checkup on Wednesday, and her small size is finally a problem—or, rather, it finally elicited a concerned reaction. She’s been around the 25th percentile for weight ever since birth—growing steadily—but between her last checkup at ten months and this visit, she gained nothing. I was instructed to start weaning her, get more calories into her, and come back in five weeks for a weigh-in—and if she showed no progress we’d have to see a GI specialist. I do not think anything is wrong with Lucia’s GI system, mainly because when we saw the doctor at ten months, he told me not to give her anymore cheese or yogurt until her first birthday. She’d been greatly enjoying both things, and I’m hoping re-introducing them (plus cow’s milk) will get her back on track. Also, since that last appointment, Lucia has turned into a real playground-lover, traipsing around the equipment without a pause every single day. So not enough calories plus burning more calories—it seems to make ...

It was great fun celebrating Lucia’s birthday this weekend. We had a celebratory dinner at Fornino Friday night with Mom and Dad, where Lucia greatly enjoyed some focaccia and pizza crust. Sunday, with Molly, Ian, and some friends, Lucia was the guest of honor at her first birthday party, where she sank warily into her high chair during the singing of “Happy Birthday” then devoured part of a carrot cake muffin. She even wore a party dress—white with polka dots, gold ribbon trim, and yellow tulle—that had been a gift for my shower. She looked like a little birthday princess. Ridiculous, but also adorable. She played with some baby-friends and seemed to enjoy being the center of attention. Even as it was happening, Lucia’s birthday was being relegated to the second spot on my “things to think about” list, because at the end of last week we got some news: on Monday, we’re going back to California for a month—Andrew has to do some in-person work at his company’s HQ. We’re not exactly going...

Dear Little One, HAPPY BIRTHDAY! Happy birthday Happy birthday Happy birthday. I feel such a sense of achievement today. I have kept you alive for one whole year—not only alive but healthy and happy. And I have not gone off the deep end with being both a first-time mom and a stay-at-home mom. Really, it’s a day-by-day thing, but so far, so good. I’m proud of myself, proud of you, proud of Daddy. It’s truly a day to celebrate. You are cuter than ever at one year old. Your new love is stuffed animals—you hold them and snuggle them and bite their noses. You love anything that makes noise. You seem to love chaos—our living room, always neat first thing in the morning, is very quickly a whirlpool of whipped-about newspapers, swiped-off items from the coffee table, and strewn toys and books. You move about with determination, your little hands slapping the ground, and you still love to stand up. You are now “cruising” along the furniture, and sometimes walking when we hold your hands, but so...

While Andrew toiled away in Frankfurt last week, Lucia and I journeyed south, to spend a few days with Andrew’s family. Our flight down was okay. We had an empty seat next to us, so Lucia could stand and sit and play the whole time—she seemed thrilled to crawl around under the seats, touch all the interesting venting, and pull all the in-flight reading from the seat-back pocket. She was so happy and calm that I allowed her to do all this even though I was, of course, horrified at the sheer filthiness of the things she was touching. I had no alternative, really. The only times she cried during the flight were when I forced her to sit on my lap: at take off; when I tried to get her to nap (who was I kidding?); and during landing. But then we were there, and got to see Granny and GrandBob, Great Nanny, and Great Aunt Thelma, and a couple of highly interesting cats. Friday we all—along with Katherine and Patrick—set out for Atlanta, to go to Andrew’s cousin’s wedding. This was the longest ...

It’s cold and wet here—true October weather—and, with Lucia’s birthday just two weeks away, I feel that old sense of anticipation and expectation. And though I’m not packing for a hospital stay as I was last year, I am packing for a trip—Lucia and I are heading to Jacksonville tomorrow, just the two of us, spending a few days with Granny and GrandBob and going to a wedding while Andrew is in Germany. If we can survive the three-hour flight, it will be a lovely weekend. I am, however, jealous of Andrew’s trip, even though it’s crazily work-intensive without much (or any) time for sight-seeing. Still, the thought of a long transatlantic flight, an eye mask, some wine, a darkened plane, makes me wish I, too, could have a Europe-bound adventure. We’re talking about a long weekend in Paris or Rome sometime this winter, but in the meantime, it’s just me and Lucia here at home, putting blocks and toys into a bowl and dumping them out again, knocking different toys together to hear the sounds,...

I was out until 10:30pm Friday night! Andrew got tickets from a co-worker to a great dance performance at BAM, so I ventured there while he stayed home with Lucia. It was a fantastic performance—Vollmond, by a German dance troupe, which involved copious amounts of water flung from buckets and pooled on the stage and falling as rain from the ceiling. Truly breathtaking; it left me with heart pounding. And I was so happy to be back at BAM. I feel hipper and more stylish just from being there. Until 10:30pm!! Lucia is eating vast, vast quantities of food. We met friends for brunch at Flatbush Farm on Saturday, and more friends today at Sarabeth’s on the UES, and I packed a great amount of food both times just to be on the safe side—half an avocado, bananas, a pile of mango pieces, a healthy serving of broccoli with fiore pasta. She ate every bite, plus a handful of cheerios. She eats with gusto. Saturday night, feeling on top of things and resourceful, I decided to whip together a homemad...

Saturday was a remarkable day. While Andrew and Lucia had some daddy-and-baby time, I got a haircut, walked in every aisle of DSW and tried on as many pairs of shoes as I wanted, then went to a yoga class. I had more time to myself on Saturday afternoon than I’ve had in months. Months! It was glorious. Of course, I was glad, later, to return to my cherished Ones. But it certainly did feel nice to stroll about Park Slope with a yoga mat slung over one shoulder, DSW bag in hand. It was amazing how rejuvenating a few hours could be.

Yesterday Lucia and I had our second Music Together class. It has been surprising to watch how much she’s changed over just two classes. Last week, though she sat raptly throughout the class, she stayed close to me—she scooted off my lap but stayed nestled right by me, letting the other kids swarm around the big drum at the beginning of class and excitedly approach Nicolai, our teacher. While the older kids (14-15 months) ran around during class, she sat still, dutifully holding onto her egg shakers or instruments when appropriate. At the end of class, when Nicolai invited the children to touch his guitar, I led Lucia’s long, thin fingers in a delicate strum—markedly different from the other kids’ banging and grabbing of strings. I returned home pleased that Lucia was so clearly a Good Student . This week, however, after a brief initial period of getting the lay of the land before class started, she scooted off my lap and crawled right over to the big drum, beating it with her little p...

As Lucia pulled herself up on every surface and object in our living room this afternoon, I scoured the latest issue of Parenting to find things to mock. I didn’t have to look far. On page 23, in a short bit called “A Better Day, Stat!,” I found the following pieces of advice for how to uplift my spirits without taking a weekend trip: “Lie down: Research shows that it’s easier to deal with bad news and criticism when you’re lying down versus sitting up. So the next time you hear ‘Mommy, I don’t like you!’ or “You’re so mean!’ fling yourself down on that couch.” “Color your world: Bye-bye, blues; hello, bright hues. Looking at things that are yellow or green can boost happiness, says research. Stock the fruit bowl with lemons, bananas, and apples or set your computer’s desktop to a grassy green.” COMMENTARY: Lying down and staring at a fruit bowl—it sounds relaxing, indeed. It also sounds a bit…troubling, especially if done for long stretches at a time while one’s screaming child is ru...